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Chestnuts

Watched Chestnuts – a local parody comedy musical/play. It was pretty entertaining, a few dry moments but largely pretty funny – considering how up to date and relevant most of the jokes were.

It was, refreshing/reminding, to hear the political jokes, the cultural jokes, the local jokes. It was a satirical high-brow entertainment. Really rare when daily life is dominated by straight laced news, run of the mill tv and radio hosts designed safely for the masses, a broad swathe of people at work which have normal concerns, normal outlook, normal conversations. It was really nice to be with a bunch of well read and critical people.

That’s culture. Culture is being you, the history, the ups, the downs, the unique flotsam of traits and memories that you pick up over the years that stick and make you who you are. You joke about it, you recognise it for what it is. It’s hilarious how the government makes so much effort to build up a culture. A lot of it is flat down hopeless – the nationalistic ndp, songs, slogans, etc. But some of it sticks, some don’t, but it is our history and we laugh at it.

The arts community, the Arts community, the liberal arts community, they are in constant struggle against the common folk of straight laces, against the government of strict rules and archaic ways, against the conformists. They rebel and question and write, and have thoughts.

Nothing is too sacred to joke about. If you cannot joke about something, you are totally not over it, you’re too emotional and uptight about it, you haven’t yet learnt to accept it. Joking about something shows that you are really comfortable with what you are, and also it’s fun, in the right spirit of things.

Watching Chestnuts also made me think about the boringness of daily work, of whether you lose the soul and breadth of exposure you receive as a student, of whether life should be spent on more interesting things rather than a corporate job. After all, why stress over someone else’s thing. What is our measure of success and life?